{"id":45079,"date":"2017-01-14T06:22:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-14T13:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=45079"},"modified":"2017-01-14T07:57:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T14:57:47","slug":"male-common-merganser-in-a-natural-vignette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/14\/male-common-merganser-in-a-natural-vignette\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Common Merganser In A Natural Vignette"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vignetting is a reduction of an image’s brightness (or saturation or sharpness)\u00a0around the frame edges as compared to the center of the photo. It can be an undesirable and unintentional effect resulting from lens limitations or camera settings but it’s most often done deliberately during post-processing for creative effect (to draw attention to the center of the frame).<\/p>\n

Although I occasionally enjoy\u00a0them in old black and white photographs of people I’m not a fan of vignettes in nature photography. In bird, wildlife and landscape photography vignettes seem unnatural and pretentious to me. I really don’t like them (opinions on that will vary of course…).<\/p>\n

But occasionally natural lighting can produce a vignette effect that I enjoy.<\/p>\n

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\"common1\/2500. f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I visited a small pond I haven’t been to for several years and was pleasantly surprised to find at least 43 Common Mergansers of both sexes there.\u00a0Due to overcast conditions the\u00a0lighting was marginal at best but I couldn’t pass up a chance to be reasonably close to so many great birds so I hauled out my tripod and walked to the most\u00a0desirable vantage\u00a0point available and fired away.<\/p>\n

Despite the poor light this image of a male\u00a0stood out from the rest for me because of\u00a0its natural vignetting. Reflections on the water from the bare trees behind the bird caused many of the frame edges to be significantly darker than the center\u00a0of the image where the bird is.\u00a0And I think the reflections and wave patterns at the top of the frame are unusually attractive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"common<\/p>\n

Here’s the uncropped image to give us a better idea of the source of the dark reflections. I considered a vertical crop and composition which would have made the upper and lower frame edges darker and more contributive to the vignette effect but that would have been a squarish composition that doesn’t appeal to me.<\/p>\n

I don’t think it’s a great image but I enjoy it and\u00a0the vignette effect did get my attention.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Addendum:\u00a0Just for\u00a0the sake of curiosity I decided to add another version of\u00a0the image. Here the vignetting effect is enhanced by providing more darkness at the top and bottom of the frame and it includes more of the lovely water reflections\u00a0up top that I like\u00a0but the squarish crop isn’t ideal. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"common<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m generally not a fan of vignettes in nature photography because to me they seem unnatural and pretentious.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,348],"tags":[92,211,1245,3261],"class_list":["post-45079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-common-mergansers","tag-common-merganser","tag-male","tag-mergus-merganser","tag-vignette"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/common-merganser-5005b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bJ5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}